Showing posts with label Le Cordon Bleu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Le Cordon Bleu. Show all posts

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Patisserie Melanie's Kouign-Amanns



You'd be forgiven if, after stepping into Melanie Dunn's Pâtisserie Mélanie in Hillcrest, you thought you had been transported to a sweet little Parisian bakery. French posters and art rest on soft blue walls. A counter is stocked with pastries, baked in small batches. There's a small seating area and vintage/retro housewares and cookbooks for sale. It's very sweet, very sophisticated, and reflects Dunn's pastry training at Le Condon Bleu in Paris over three summers. Heck, she and her husband and young daughter even live above the shop. It's where Dunn does her baking with an assistant.

The pastries are stunning. Flaky butter, chocolate, and pistachio croissants. Pain aux Raisins. Chocolate and lemon tarts. Cannelés Bordelais. And, oh, Kouign-Amanns, both classic and cinnamon. Dunn also makes caramels, macarons (of course), sable cookies, and preserves. The flavors change with the seasons. In fact, her holiday collection--Macarons "Les Fêtes"--is a box of four apple cider, fig, hazelnut, and pumpkin macarons.


Dunn opened Pâtisserie Mélanie on Valentine's Day 2018. Previously, the native Hawaiian had been an English teacher at Crawford High School for 15 years. She had thought about being a graphic designer. Then she applied to law school and got into USD. But law school wasn't for her so, with some experience teaching, she opted instead to get her teaching credential. All the while she felt she wanted something else and at the 10-year point as a teacher, burnt out and ready for a change she headed into a direction that had always intrigued her: baking.

"I was a picky eater as a child and didn't get to eat desserts, which made me obsessed with them," she says. "I have a persona that likes things just so and that fit with baking."

Dunn (who taught and is friends with San Diego chef Katherine Humphus) made use of her summer vacations from teaching to attend Le Cordon Bleu in Paris for eight-week sessions focused on pastry. After three years she earned her Diplôme de Pâtisserie. Initially, her plan was to stop teaching and work in the industry. But around 2015 she and husband Axel Schwarz, also a teacher, started house hunting. They stumbled upon a townhouse in Hillcrest on Park Blvd. that had a large room at the entrance, with the rest of the space behind the room and upstairs. That front room could be a bakery--and with new cottage food laws in place, she could do her baking in her own kitchen. It took awhile to make it all work, mostly because she decided to pause her plans with the birth of her daughter. But by the beginning of 2018 Dunn was ready to launch. Now she's contemplating ways to expand.

I spent a wonderful morning with Dunn, learning how to make her Kouign-Amann. This is a Breton cake, filled with butter and still more butter. It's the perfect introduction to lamination--the process of folding butter into dough to get the flaky layers you enjoy in puff pastry and croissants. There aren't nearly as many turns with Kouign-Amann, so if you've been wanting to try making a laminated pastry, this is perfect. And, damn, they're both delicious and beautiful!

It also takes awhile. Dunn suggests making this a weekend process with the first day making the dough, then refrigerating it overnight and returning to it the next day to roll, fold, and bake the pastries.

This recipe makes 9 good-sized pastries. You can mix the dough in a 4-quart stand mixer using a dough hook, but if you have the larger  6-quart bowl, the hook won't engage. The recipe is too small. So, you can either double the recipe--or do what Dunn did and mix it by hand.

Let's do it by hand. It's pretty easy, especially if you have a thin scraper to pull ingredients from the side of the bowl.


You'll start with flour, salt, and 10 grams of unsalted butter in a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour-salt mixture to incorporate it. Then mix together year with water and add it to the flour mixture, using the scraper to bring the ingredients together to form the dough.


Once it's all mixed, turn it out onto your counter (I have a marble slab that works well; granite countertops are equally good.). You'll knead the dough for up to 8 minutes until it has an elastic quality. Shape it and wrap it in plastic and let it chill overnight.


The next day, you'll preheat the oven, depending on whether you have a convection or conventional oven, to either 350 or 375 degrees. Then you'll get out your butter (Dunn suggests that it be at least 85 percent butter fat) and shape it into a rectangle (you could also do this the day before and wrap it up to chill).

Now it gets real. You're going to start laminating. Pull the dough from the fridge and use just enough flour on the counter--or "bench"--to keep it from sticking. Roll it into a long rectangle, the same width as the butter's length and place the butter in the center. Now fold the top and bottom of the dough over the butter so they meet in the middle. Turn it over so the seam is underneath.

Dunn's helpful hint is to create a grid of indentations using your rolling pin to help you roll the dough straight. Then roll it out to 24 inches in length. Now for your first fold. It's called a "double book fold"--what that means is you'll fold one end to mid point of length of dough over the butter, fold the other end to same mid point, then fold one 'side' of the book on top of the other.


Now you'll create another grid of indentations and roll it out again. Then you'll do a letter/envelope fold, meaning you fold it in thirds. One end is folded two-thirds of the way up the length of the dough. Then you'll pull the other end over to the opposite side to cover the first fold. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest for at least an hour.


Now it's time to get it ready for baking. Get out one of your muffin/cupcake pans. Set it aside, along with a ruler and a knife.

Sprinkle half the sugar on the bench. Unwrap the dough and place it on top, then sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the dough. Roll out the dough and do your last turn, an envelope fold, and sprinkle any remaining sugar on the bench onto the dough.

Roll the dough into a 12-inch square. Using your ruler, mark a 3 by 3 grid of 9, with each square 4 inches. Trim the edges so they're straight and cut out the squares.

With each square, you'll pull in the four corners and press into the center. Place/push each piece into a muffin pan opening and gently press the center down. Dunn suggests using the outer spaces.


Bake! It'll be about an hour for the convection oven and an hour and 15 minutes for conventional ovens. Get out a rack while they're baking and place it on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan to catch drips. The butter will leave a pool at the bottom but what you're looking for is a caramelized, golden brown bottom.

Too light on the left; just right on the right

The best tool for pulling out the pastries is a pasta tongs, Dunn says. When they're done, place each pastry upside down on the rack to cool.

Then eat! Oh, you did it!


Kouign-Amann
From Melanie Dunn, Patisserie Melanie
Yield: 9 pastries
(printable recipe)

Ingredients
275 grams all-purpose flour
5 grams salt
10 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
2.5 grams instant yeast
165 milliliters water
225 grams unsalted butter (85% butter fat or higher preferred), chilled in the fridge
225 grams granulated sugar

Directions
Place flour, salt, and 10 grams of butter in a bowl and rub the butter into flour-salt mixture.

Mix yeast with water and add to flour mixture. Use a thin scraper to bring ingredients together and form dough.

Turn dough onto counter or other surface and knead from 6 to 8 minutes until it develops elasticity.

Shape the dough into a square, double wrap in plastic wrap, and place in a ziplock bag. Chill in refrigerator overnight.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees for a convection oven and 375 for a conventional oven.

Place the 225 grams of butter on a piece of parchment paper. Using a rolling pin smack it around and roll it out into a 5-inch by 7-inch rectangle. It should be about the same texture as the dough. Set aside.

Remove dough from refrigerator, unwrap and, using just a little flour to prevent sticking, roll it out into a 10-inch by 7-inch rectangle. Place the slab of butter in the center. Its length should be equal to the rolled out dough's width. Fold top of the dough over the butter so it reaches the halfway point of the butter. Repeat with the bottom of the dough.

Turn over so it’s seam side down and with the rolling pin, create a grid of indentations to help you roll the dough straight. Roll the dough out to 24 inches long. Do one double book fold (fold one end to mid point of length of dough over the butter, fold the other end to same mid point, then fold one 'side' of the book on top of the other). Create another grid of indentations and roll out again. Do a letter/envelope fold (fold in thirds = fold one end two-thirds of the way up the length of dough, then take the other end and stretch it to the opposite side to 'cover' the first fold ). Wrap it in plastic and let it rest for at least one hour.

Sprinkle half the sugar on the bench—your flat surface. Unwrap and place dough on top. Add the rest of the sugar on the dough. Roll to 22 inches by 9 inches. Do one envelope fold and then sprinkle any sugar remaining on the bench on top.

Roll to a 12-inch square. Using a ruler, mark a grid of 9 (3 by 3). Each small square should be 4 inches. Trim the edge so they’re straight, then cut the grid into squares.

Take one square and fold in all four corners, pressing toward the center. Place into a muffin cup and gently press the center down. Repeat for each around the edges of the muffin pan.

Bake at 350 degrees in a convection oven for about an hour or 375 degrees in a conventional oven for about an hour and 15 minutes. Check for caramelization by lifting up one of the pastries with a pasta tongs and looking at the bottom. If it’s still a little light and a little wet, return the pastry to the muffin cup and bake another 5 minutes. Check again. The bottom should be golden brown and caramelized.

Prepare a rack by placing it a sheet pan lined with parchment paper (to catch the butter and sugar drips. Remove each pastry immediately from the muffin cups and place upside down on the rack to cool.


Pâtisserie Mélanie is located at 3788 Park Blvd., Suite 4 in Hillcrest.



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Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Anthony Sinsay's Mussels Adobo



Do you talk to your food? Anthony Sinsay does. The executive chef at Duke's La Jolla, which opened last November, says that this conversation helps you learn where your food is in the cooking process. Sinsay was showing me how he makes his signature dish, Mussels Adobo, which I had fallen in love with at dinner a few months back. He had sautéed a sliced jalapeño, garlic, and onion--one of the best fragrances ever, of course. Then he added the ebony Prince Edward Island mussels to the pan. He stopped talking to listen.

"You'll hear the mussels purge their water," he said. "Then you know you need to add a little liquid to keep them moist."

Sinsay has been cooking most of his life. He said with smile that his mom was no cook. But his dad was. Sinsay especially loved waking up to the scents of Thanksgiving dishes his father prepared from early in the morning to ready for hordes of cousins to eat at midday. Sinsay spent hours and hours with his dad, who suffered from congestive heart failure, watching cooking shows with him--Julia Child, Martin Yan, Jeff Smith--until he passed away when Sinsay was just 11 years old.

"I remember my dad through cooking," Sinsay says with emotion. "After he died, there was no one to cook. My siblings were much older so when I got home it was my job to make dinner."

Sinsay's culinary inspiration came from his dad. But after he died, his mom began exposing him to restaurant dining. "We dined out a lot with my Mom at places like Mr. A's," he said. "By the time I was 15 I knew I wanted to go into culinary."

Sinsay attended Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena, learning the fundamentals of European cuisine. But over the years it's become important to him to infuse his dishes with his Filipino heritage. "These are flavors and techniques that come naturally to me."

It's become especially meaningful since he and his wife Elyse have had kids. "Food is a huge component of being Filipino. I want my kids to understand that there's more to life than Happy Meals. I want them to understand where they come from."

So, for instance, for their birthdays, he makes them pancit, a traditional noodle dish filled with vegetables. Like the Chinese, who introduced noodles to the Philippines, Filipinos believe in the symbolism of noodles representing long life and good health.

Now the Mussels Adobo, which Sinsay also used to make at Burlap when he ran that kitchen, is inspired by his mom. "She grew up in the southern part of the Luzon Island in the Philippines. She made this dish with chicken that would simmer in the adobo sauce. I like making it with mussels, but I had to add sugar to the adobo sauce recipe to compensate for the shortened cooking time. When you cook vinegar a long time it becomes sweet. This dish with mussels cooks so quickly I needed to add a sweetener."


This dish is based on a traditional adobo sauce--soy sauce, vinegar, and water. Sinsay quickly whips up the sauce and sets it aside while he first sautés the vegetables, then adds the mussels. He mixes in the adobo sauce and covers the pan, cooking the mussels until they open. Then, in what takes the dish to a seductive level, Sinsay adds coconut cream and butter. That's it. Oh, except for one more critical addition: grilled pan de sal, the addictive sweet white Filipino yeast bread. Just brush slices with olive oil and toast on a grill until crispy--then try not dunking them in the luscious mussels sauce. I dare you!


Mussels Adobo
From Anthony Sinsay of Duke's La Jolla
(printable recipe)
Serves 4

Adobe is the national dish of the Philippines and varies from region to region. This version is closest to the adobo I grew up with made by my mother from southern Luzon. The sauce is an acidic broth comprised of white distilled vinegar, soy sauce, and water. Cooked with onion, garlic, and jalapeño balancing sweet, umami, spicy, and salty. It's finished with coconut cream and butter to enrich the flavor and texture. The Pan de Sal is a Filipino yeast-risen dough with a slight sweet flavor, contrary to what the name suggests. Garnish the mussels with chive spears and crispy garlic chips (slice the garlic thin, blanch, then fry).




Ingredients
3 ounces adobo sauce (see below for recipe)
1/2 ounce of olive and canola oil blend
1 jalapeño, sliced in rings (include seeds if you want more heat)
1 1/2 ounces yellow onion, sliced in rings
1 whole peeled garlic clove, minced
9 1/2 ounces mussels, cleaned
1 1/2 ounces coconut milk
1/2 ounces butter
.1 ounce fresh chives, sliced into 2-inch pieces
1 loaf pan de sal, sliced
Olive oil

For adobo sauce
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup distilled vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup water

Directions
1. Make adobo sauce: Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly until all sugar is dissolved. Set aside.
2.  Sauté the jalapeño, onion, and garlic clove in oil. Brush pan de sal slices with olive oil and grill.
3. Add the mussels and stir together.
4. Add the adobo sauce, stir together, and cover, cooking until the mussels open.
5. Remove lid and remove mussels from the heat. Stir in coconut cream and butter. Taste the sauce and add salt if necessary to balance the flavor.
6. Garnish with chives and garlic chips (optional). Serve with grilled pan de sal.



Duke's La Jolla is located at 1216 Prospect St. in La Jolla Village.


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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Azúcar's Key Lime White Chocolate Scones


 When Vivian Hernandez-Jackson invited me to come back scones with her at her Ocean Beach eatery, Azúcar, I wondered how that thoroughly British pastry related to her Cuban heritage. A first-generation American whose parents settled in Miami, where she was born and raised, Vivian turns out magnificent casual Cuban dishes like traditional Cubano sandwiches with rich, slow-roasted Cuban-style pork, sliced ham, and Swiss cheese served with plantain chips and a remarkable mojo dip--a blend of sour orange juice, canola oil and pureed raw garlic. Her Cuban meat pies are reminiscent of empanadas--a sweet meat filling that goes back to the picadillo santiaguerro her mom made wrapped in a flaky dough.



But scones?

To get the scones you have to dig a little into Vivian's background. "I started cooking at age seven and was obsessed by cooking shows," she reminisces. "I loved watching The Frugal Gourmet, Nathalie Dupree, and Jacques Pepin."

As she grew up, she knew she wanted to bake for a living but dutifully attended Florida International University, where she earned a degree in hotel management in just three years--satisfying her parents' need for her to do something practical.

Then she headed off for London for a year in 2001, where she attended Le Cordon Bleu, taking both the cooking and baking courses. "I loved that actual cooking is what we did. Everyday."

During that time, she worked at Claridge's and--here's the payoff--made hundreds and hundreds of scones. They became as much a part of her repertoire as the other pastries she learned to make. She brought those skills back to Miami, where she was a pastry cook at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel for a year before moving to San Diego to teach at the National Culinary School in La Mesa for a couple of years. The desk job Vivian then took in product development for a food marketing company lasted only a year and a half before she knew she had to get back into a kitchen. She took a job as pastry cook at Tartine in Coronado and her three years there gave her the insights she needed into how to run a small retail bakery.

By then Vivian and her husband had settled in Ocean Beach and she realized that there was no place to get made-from-scratch pastries in the neighborhood. It was the end of 2007 when she signed a lease for her spot on Newport Ave. Azúcar opened the following July. Now, about to celebrate six years in business she marvels that she launched it at the very moment the country was sinking into the Great Recession.



But people need to eat. And Vivian gets a thrill whenever she drives through the neighborhood and sees people holding her distinctive green pastry boxes or cups of coffee with green coffee sleeves.

And her food? She's figured out ways to give a tropical, Cuban flair to traditional pastries--adding coconut and macademia nuts to Florentine Bars, and key limes, mojito mint, mango, Cuban rum, and passion fruit to her many other sweets--and to improve the ingredients of the Cuban foods she grew up enjoying. So, no lard or margarine in her doughs; it's good butter. Quality pork and cheeses, chocolate and ham. And her pastries are baked in real time.

In fact, when I arrived at Azúcar at 2:30 in the afternoon, all the pastries for the following day had been made and put raw in the freezer to be baked first thing the following morning and throughout the day as needed. It alleviates the stress of making and baking early in the morning and reduces waste. Plus, customers get freshly baked treats throughout the day.


So, Vivian waited for me to arrive to bake her planned batch of Key Lime White Chocolate Scones. It's truly an easy recipe that produces a soft, melt-in-your-mouth pastry that teases with the brightness of key lime flavor. And, Vivian has some very cool tricks to make the baking and enjoying process even easier. It starts with having the flexibility of making the dough (or buying it from her) and freezing to bake later in small batches or even one at a time. And, with this wet dough, you form the individual scones by using a large ice cream scoop. This way you have uniform-sized pastries and you prevent overhandling the dough. In fact, I was surprised that even I, who she put to work scooping out the dough onto the half sheet, reached the end of the sheet with precisely 54 scones (6X9 even rows) with nothing left in the Hobart mixer's bowl. I love the precision of a good baker.

Key Lime White Chocolate Scones
from Vivian Hernandez-Jackson, Azúcar
(printable recipe)

Makes 9 large scones

For scones:
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter cold diced
3/4 cup buttermilk
zest of 1 lime
2 tablespoons key lime juice (You can find containers of Nelly & Joe's Key West Lime Juice at major supermarkets.)

 
1/2 cup white chocolate chips or chunks
Baking spray
Granulated sugar

For key lime icing:
1/4 cup key lime juice
1 cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 325˚.
2. With mixer on low speed and using paddle attachment, combine dry ingredients. Add the cold diced butter and blend until the mixture resembles wet sand and no large pieces butter remain.



3. Pour in the buttermilk, zest, and juice. Mix until all are combined, then gently mix in white chocolate chips/chunks.


4. Scoop scones onto a sheet pan with parchment paper that has been sprayed with baking spray. Place about 2 inches apart. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar before baking.


At this point you can freeze them and bake off when needed.

If baking fresh: 25-30 minutes
If baking frozen: 30-35 minutes

When scones come out of the oven, drizzle with key lime icing. If you have leftover scones the following day, reheat them briefly in the microwave just to warm them inside before eating.



Azúcar is located at 4820 Newport Ave. in Ocean Beach. It's open daily, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.


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